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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Quackery Surgery

Mammography and the risk of breast cancer from low dose radiation: Weighing the risks versus hysteria

I’m beginning to understand why evolutionary biologists are so sensitive about how creationists abuse and twist any research that they think can be used to cast doubt upon evolution. Whenever there is research that changes the way we look at evolution or suggest aspects of it that we didn’t appreciate before, where scientists get excited […]

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Biology Evolution Medicine Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Deepak Chopra and his Choprawoo translated: “Skeptics, take my ill-informed speculations seriously!”

He’s baaaack. Deepak Chopra. Remember him? It’s been a while since I’ve said much about him and him alone. True, I’ve gone after him this year when he joined up with three other major league woo-meisters Dean Ornish, Rustum Roy, and Andrew Weil to try to try to help Senator Tom Harkin hijack the health […]

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Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Update on “coma man” Rom Houben: Dr. Steven Laureys still just doesn’t get it

The day before the Thanksgiving holiday, I wrote about a serious contender for the worst medical reporting of the year, if not the decade, specifically how credulous reporters had swarmed all over the case of a Belgian man named Rom Houben. If you don’t remember or haven’t heard about the details, feel free to peruse […]

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History Humor Medicine Science World War II

How to respond to annoying reviewers…

You know, I have three manuscripts in the hopper with two of them having recently been returned to me with reviewers’ comments. Frustratingly, one of these is a manuscript that I’ve been trying to get published for nearly a year now. Given that I appear to have some work to do over the long holiday […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics

“Obama’s fixin’ death panels for your mama”: The USPSTF recommendations for mammography used as a political weapon

As I discussed in detail when I analyzed them, the new USPSTF recommendations for screening mammography for breast cancer have sparked a debate that has degenerated from a scientific and public policy debate into pure emotional rhetoric. When last I visited this topic, yesterday, I had intended it to be my last post for a […]